Slideshow of quilts

Thursday, October 21, 2010

Navratri Festival

A huge festival in town and the noise was incredible. The festival was Navratri which means nine nights, it honors the Mother Goddess-Divine Shakti. She destroys evil and grants boons to her children.
Here of pictures of the sea of humanity that walked by our apartment building on the way to the festival. It is estimated that 800,000 indians came to town for the festival and it turns out we live on the main entrance to town. They walked passed us at all hours of the day and night. Lots of music, loud speakers encouraging the pilgrims as they walked along.

They played music and danced until all hours of the night, and they didn't stop during the day. Making it very difficult for us to sleep. I understand that there is a lot of dancing and beautiful traditional clothing worn. Dave of course had no interest in heading into the sea of humanity for a closer look and so I can't attest to that being true or not. : > )!

Dave needed to travel to Mumbai for business so Tim and I joined him. We stayed at the Suba Galaxy hotel near the airport. All three of us stayed in the same room on 3 twin beds, Tim's was a pull out chair. The hotel had very good air conditioning and was clean. The beds were thin mattress on wood so think very hard, no give at all. But it was nice to be in Mumbai, it afforded us with a chance to attend church and to hang out with other Americans. We played charades for the first with two other American families, the Williams and the Dickens. It was wonderful to be able to talk and share ideas with others who are having a similar experience. Although I was struck by how different the vegetable markets were in Mumbai, there was a much greater variety of vegetables and of higher quality than we were able to get in Bhuj.

A Muslim Mosque

We had a wonderful driver by the name of Robin, who worked for Only Friends. He spoke English and took Tim and I to see the various sites in Churchgate.

The Mosque is a beautiful site on a peninsula. The walk way was filled with people heading to and from the Mosque.

I love this plaque in the Hanging Gardens. Good health really does bless the generations. It's interesting I did a life clock. If I live in the United States, I will live until I am 79 years old, but with changing nothing other than the fact that I now live in India it cuts my life expectancy to 67 (only 17 more years to go). Which is funny because my housekeeper says Americans aren't healthy and we need to be more like the Indians, but then she also says her bread is healthier because it's made with wheat? Gee, since we are using the same flour to make both the breads, her comment just doesn't make sense to me. After all, wheat flour is wheat flour or is it. ; > ).

Here are some more wonderful pictures we took. This the view from the Hanging gardens down to the beach. I think the thing that struck me the most washow clean everything was in Church Gate. Unlike
the rest of Mumbai there wasn't trash littering the park or the beach. I loved looking at the incredible buildings.